AL West Notes: Street, Shoemaker, Astros, Vogt

The Angels announced today that right-hander Huston Street has been activated from the disabled list. The 33-year-old Street has been out all season with a strained right lat muscle — an injury that initially led to just a two- to three-week shutdown in Spring Training but ultimately cost him more than a third of the season. The remainder of the season will be key for Street, who struggled throughout the 2016 campaign due in part to a knee injury and now has roughly three months to prove his health before the guaranteed portion of his contract ends. While his $10MM club option seems very likely to be bought out for $1MM at present, a strong finish to the year could still position him nicely as a free agent.

More from the American League West…

Angels righty Matt Shoemaker, currently on the disabled list due to tightness in his forearm, underwent an MRI that didn’t reveal any structural damage, GM Billy Eppler tells reporters (via Jeff Fletcher of the Orange County Register). Shoemaker has played catch twice this week and is hoping to return on Sunday, but skipper Mike Scioscia suggested that the Angels will proceed fairly cautiously to avoid worsening the issue. Shoemaker is fourth on the Angels in innings pitched and third in starts made, though he’s sitting on a pedestrian 4.52 ERA through 77 2/3 frames.

The Astros are seeing the fewest four-seam fastballs of any team in recent history but are also throwing the fewest number of four-seamers as a team, observes Eno Sarris of Fangraphs. Houston players such as George Springer, Brad Peacock, Brian McCann and Josh Reddick all chatted with Sarris about the trend, offering potential explanations for the manner in which they’ve been pitched. Peacock, who is having a breakout season, described his deviation from the four-seamer as “playing keepaway,” and Sarris points out that Mike Fiers’ season turned around sharply when he began incorporating a sinker into his fastball mix. Springer suggested to Sarris that the move away from four-seamers is a league-wide trend — the Angels, for one team, have been moving away from four-seamers — while McCann suggests that perhaps the trend is merely part of the natural ebb and flow of pitching trends that takes place throughout the league every few years. It’s an interesting read with very good insight from several players that’s well worth a full look.

The decision to move on from Stephen Vogt was an immensely difficult one for the Athletics organization, writes Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle. Vogt was beloved by his teammates, the coaching staff, front office, media and fans in Oakland, but the return of the younger Bruce Maxwell from an oblique injury and Vogt’s struggles at the plate forced the issue. Slusser reports that GM David Forst actually informed Vogt prior to yesterday’s game that it was likely to be his last with the team. “That’s what he deserved,” Forst tells Slusser. The GM adds that the move was so difficult “entirely because of who Stephen is.” Lefty Sean Doolittle calls Vogt the “unquestioned captain” of the A’s, and a number of teammates lauded his contributions to the team over the years.

Okay, because this went on way too long and continually missed reality…

The apostrophe is to denote missing letters. It is generally used in contractions (T’was, hadn’t, etc) but is proper anytime letters are removed from a word (ol’ , li’l, etc)

“A’s” is saying nothing more than “Athletics” in a shorter space; in this case replacing “thletic” with an indicator those letters were removed. Similarly, “O’s” is saying “Orioles” and “M’s” is saying “Mariners” – they too are the proper shortening of the words while keeping the team name plural

The sentence you are worried about is properly written while literally saying exactly this;
“…the ‘unquestioned captain’ of the Athletics, and a number of teammates lauded his contributions to the team over the years.”

So your argument has changed, going from “No possession here … the apostrophe is incorrect” to ‘articles written about a kids game in local newspapers are formal writing and should follow the strictest rules regarding the use of grammar?’

Fine though, I will address the new complaint you developed after being shown you were completely off-base obsessing on the first – you do realize the year is 2017, not 1870, correct? We have Supreme Court Justices using contractions now, and there was even a Black President if you can believe that.

Let me weigh in, as I am a former A’s magazine editor. (Well, technically, it is called Athletics magazine.)

When writing the shorthand version, we never deviated from “A’s” because it is the universally accepted, trademarked nickname of the club. It might be technically incorrect without context, but with context, it is effectively correct. At no point would we have ever considered writing “As” or ” As’ ” for the sake of grammatical correctness, as that would change the name as understood by the entirety of the baseball world. And since the point of language is to communicate, it would be more incorrect to confuse readers by printing an unrecognized presentation of the team’s nickname.

But the ultimate missed point by the apostrophe troll is that the apostrophe is not used to create a possessive, nor is it exactly used for a contraction (in the traditional sense). As darkstar61 points out, the apostrophe serves as a surrogate for the letters dropped from “Athletics” and thus is used as a space saver (which is not a technical grammar term). And again, since that is universally understood as its purpose, any deviation from it would create miscommunication–which, again, would defeat the the primary purpose of language. (That being to communicate.)

I’m just waiting for George Costanza to change the Athletics uniforms because he believes it’s not grammatically correct to “As” and people are like “Who are the AS?”

George starts getting upset, the crowd starts chanting “AS AS AS”. Billy Bean loses it because he thinks they are calling him an “ASS”. He gets fired because he punches an old lady in the face. George gets promoted because he blames Billy.

This the A’s way while they get their most precious new stadium… They squeezed players – Donaldson was actually a catcher and they developed him into a third baseman… Converted into a full star, Donaldson quipped at A’s front Office they needed to step up to they plate… Management refused sending Josh to Toronto for “the sake of it… They just don’t want to spend period…

Is this an English class? Man am I lost. (or should I have typed man, am I lost). Wait, do I need quotes around any of that? And does the period go before the end parenthesis or after it? Crap I can’t remember! I’m so stressed right now!